The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org
by Barbara Goldberg
RIDDLE
Real, mean, a stitch in, any way you cut it, you're in it, up to your gills in it, you rise in it and sink, that great leveler, you kill it, live on borrowed tock and tick, once upon a it begins and then goes by as I will love you till the end of it.
THE EARLY CHILDHOOD OF GRIEF
And from the loins of Reason and Passion springs Grief, a surly, birdlike boy
who refuses to cry. No gurgling, no babbling, no scattershot foray into the dense
and dissonant world, choosing instead to stay mute, to absorb it all
through his eyes, his parents, their singular deadlock. Passion has no patience
for Grief, nor Reason, the stomach, so consumed are they by each other.
Grief grows in time as time grows in him, each nanosecond adding
to his girth. Soon he's wearing a polka dot vest on his way to school
where he loses his marbles, is pelted with dumplings. He finds refuge lying
flat on his back in an open field where he studies the sky, the inhabitants
thereof, at ease in that recitative, consoled by the heavenly undertones.
FLOCK
The Lord is my shepherd He rides a red tractor His work boots caked With earth and dried dung
He leadeth His sheep Beside the green pastures His black dog yapping To keep them in line
They bow their heads down To nibble the clover And lap still waters They do not want
Nor fear any evil Grazing in shadows Their guttural baahs Akin to amen
POINT OF ORIGIN
We are all visitors here in a country with no standing army. There are rain forests with five species of monkeys. Birds and fish flashing neon colors. In short a land of plenty where no one goes hungry, no movies, no Chinese restaurants, no karaoke bars. We are all visitors.
What place is this, Eden? But gnats bite our ankles and we have no repellant, no pills for depression, no shade at high noon. At night the stars are magnificent, but after a while even they grow old. Or is it us and the sea which is way too salty. We are visitors.
And the god who oversees our lot, casting a liquid eye on everything that moves or is still—steam rising from a red snapper stew, crushed berries in a makeshift drinking gourd, is he too a visitor standing out in a crowd, not speaking the language or merely one in disguise, staying for good?
FLIGHT
This morning, before any bird stirs, we rise to a world without particulars, huddled
under covers of slate. By the time the first tinge of pink stains the sky we are driving
untrafficked roads to the terminal where many small surgeries are performed. Too soon
you sling your black satchel over your shoulder, a traveler bound to a land sundered by rage.
I head back to town in my blue caravan with only the shadow of heft, the echo of parry
and thrust. I see you squeezed in a narrow space, oppressed by loss and the flesh of strangers.
In fact you are flying home via Zurich and the cool remove of stewards in starched
shirts, the wilderness of your chest still fragrant with the smell of sex. Tonight an unfettered
moon will graze terrains of our own forgetting.
Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication
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